


Rotten Theatre

by MariaPurt



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, more tags to come, post-season 3, this is shameless self comforting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29929878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariaPurt/pseuds/MariaPurt
Summary: Emperor Philippa Georgiou knows she has to face her prime universe counterpart and she doesn't mind - it's a simple mission, what can possibly go wrong?
Relationships: Michael Burnham & Mirror Philippa Georgiou, Mirror Michael Burnham & Philippa Georgiou, Mirror Philippa Georgiou & Philippa Georgiou, Mirror Philippa Georgiou/Philippa Georgiou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Rotten Theatre

Light explodes before her eyes – next thing Philippa Georgiou hears is a painfully familiar voice. She’s disoriented. She reaches out to find her weapon.

“I need you to stay down.”

“What you need is unimportant,” she hisses, opening and closing her eyes. Head spins, temples pulsate, nose burns, chest hurts. This isn’t at all how this mission was supposed to go, Georgiou admits to herself, attempting once again to get up, but she already knows it won’t work: hands press her shoulders down, pinning her to the floor. It’s not a strong grip, but it’s enough right now, and this is what annoys (and scares) her the most. What the hell went wrong? How do you screw up a simple rescue mission?

She blinks a few times and her vision clears. She sees her own face staring down at her; frowns, blinks again. That face doesn’t disappear. It remains soft, albeit worried.

She looks, _stares_ at the woman above her – there can be no mistake, it truly is the Starfleet captain Philippa Georgiou. After all the holos she’s watched, she’d recognize the woman even if she weren’t wearing her Starfleet badge. But captain’s chest is not bleeding for some reason and there’s no dagger stuck in her heart anymore.

“Stay down, or that thing in your chest explodes,” her counterpart states softy, but there’s firmness in her voice, and Georgiou stills. She’s supposed to be saving her counterpart, not the other way around. The irony.

“You won’t ask me who I am?”

The forcefield mask Georgiou is wearing is a klingon one.

It would make sense to ask a klingon why she tried to save a Starfleet officer. Or why she killed other klingons. Or how she restarted the heart of the captain with a dagger still in it ( _except, there is no dagger_ ).

Captain only chuckles. Georgiou greets her teeth and looks around. She lies on the floor, her counterpart kneels beside her. They’re still on the klingon ship, so her personal transporter must have malfunctioned. That isn’t supposed to happen. In her one and a half year of work as a temporal agent this has never happened. Damn it.

“What difference does it make?”

“If I were you, I’d have killed me.” It wouldn’t be out of cruelty or even pride. It would be self preservation, something that the human captain, apparently, lacks, because how else do you beam to an enemy ship with just your Number One and no back up. It’s reckless, it’s idealistic, it’s… well, it’s what _this_ universe and _this_ time is, Georgiou spits mentally.

But this is why Georgiou was sent to save this human captain, this is why _this_ captain needs to stay alive.

One klingon’s shoved a dagger into the captain’s chest, another klingon is wounded on the floor in front of her – but the captain won’t shoot. This universe Philippa Georgiou, _captain Philippa Georgiou_ , is even more ridiculous than this universe Michael Burnham (and oh, Georgiou never thought that was even possible to beat). Ironically, it’s _her_ , Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius, a former terran emperor, who lies on the floor, helpless, useless and weak, unable to as much as get up, with her soft stupid counterpart staring down and trying to help.

Georgiou sighs. She hasn’t thought of Michael in a few months, with all that was happening there was really no time or point in dwelling on the past (or, rather, future, but that’s details). The Michael Burnham she knows and trusts with her life is almost a millennia away from her.

Captain bends closer, slides her hand under Georgiou’s head and lifts it above the floor. For a moment Georgiou is certain her neck is about to be snapped, but there’s captain’s jacket under her head now, and as much as her everything hurts, it does feel more comfortable this way: less blood runs into her eyes and nose. _Blood_. Is she bleeding? She looks at her counterpart, and there’s blood, too, so which one of them?

“You’re wounded.” Captain doesn’t ask.

“I know,” Georgiou grimaces, keeping her eyes on the captain.

“I need to get to my ship,” captain continues, and Georgiou frowns: her counterpart doesn’t seem to remember having died minutes ago, does she? They both move their gazes onto T‘Kuvma’s dead body, and there’s confusion of the captain’s face. Georgiou is almost certain this is when the captain starts remembering things: perhaps her Number One’s mutiny, perhaps even her own death and resurrection… “But you’ll bleed out if I leave.”

A-ha, so it’s _her_ who’s bleeding. Georgiou silently curses. Captain cannot – shouldn’t get out from this ship, Gods forbid she contacts Shenzhou and tells the crew she’s alive – the entire timeline will be wasted. By now Michael Burnham, _this timeline Michael Burnham_ , should be locked up for mutiny, overwhelmed with regret (because if she isn’t, who’s to say she’ll save the terran emperor in the mirror universe, and should _that_ not happen, Georgiou isn’t even sure what worries her more: her own possible demise or the temporal disaster that will follow).

“So you’ll stay,” Georgiou smirks feeling the blood run down from the corner of her mouth. This is strange: she isn’t nearly in enough pain to be bleeding so bad.

“Be still, I need to contact my ship, they’ll beam us both aboard…”

Georgiou shuts her eyes, tight, listening in on what is happening on the ship. They don’t have much time and evidently she herself has even less. Whatever went wrong, seems to have cured the captain of her chest injury completely. That’s good. It has also inflicted some sort of injury on Georgiou herself, and… What did her counterpart say, _this thing will explode in your chest_?

“Something’s jamming the signal,” Georgiou hears her own voice, but it isn’t her talking.

Good. So she’s got a few moments to think. It doesn’t last long, because she feels captains hands on the collar of her jacket, trying to open it to tend to her wound.

“You want to save the enemy, captain?” Georgiou twists her lips, then licks blood from the corner of her mouth, wincing.

“Enemy? Whatever you are, you’re not klingon,” captain laughs bitterly and pulls the jacket open.

She sees the all too familiar eye roll, wonders what else they have in common, and then –

“I…” she shoots, breathing out. Her body is finally giving in to the pain, and her voice is a cry.

Captain raises an eyebrow. She freezes, her hands on Georgiou’s chest, touching whatever it is about to explode there. Georgiou shuts her eyes again, she knows she’s running out of time. This mission is a mess as it is, she might as well do her everything to pull it off.

When she opens them again, the forcefield mask is off, and her own face stares at her from above, stunned.

“What. Are. You?” captain slowly breathes out, moving a hand to touch Georgiou’s cheek as if not trusting her own eyes. Poor soul, Georgiou thinks to herself, she doesn’t yet know there’s a mirror universe; this must be utterly confusing. It will call for a lot of unwanted explaining, _later_.

And then there’s noise, so much noise that Georgiou cannot hear her own screaming.

tbc

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are food and drinks for a ficwriter.


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